


atrophy

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Experimental Style, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nightmares, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 04:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2934005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she won't stop looking at him for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. him

the trash can's filled with used cotton balls – he's taken to carrying tissues and such with him recently - and a greasy napkin sticky with coca-cola that he held to his nose before he made it to the bathroom. his onion rings are probably cold now.

this nosebleed couldn't have come at a more perfect time, and tim isn't being sarcastic when he whispers that to the sink. whenever jessica tried to start conversation, he'd mumble, “the food's taking a while,” or, “the people who came in after us got their food before us.” he could stuff his face with appetizers whenever he got antsy, at least.

she looked irritated that he kept avoiding his questions, but who gives a shit what she thinks about his complaining. when he bought food in bulk for jay and him before they left for the next town, he'd get nasty looks, he's gotten nasty looks all his life, he'll always get nasty looks for looking ratty and unwashed and exhausted and ordering too much food to be a Good Body-Hating Fatty(™).

jay and him. he vowed to never let himself forget jay, so he forces himself to remember him. it's painful and bittersweet and causes more than enough panic attacks but he's not going to hide jay's memory in his closet with the rest of his skeletons, fuck, he doesn't deserve that. tim couldn't bury his body, so he'll keep jay with him, everyone who died without talking to their parents in five years, everyone who fought against the thing they couldn't understand or stop.

doesn't mean he'll talk about them. jessica asked how jay was doing. he picked at his nails, said, “good, but I wonder what's taking the cooks so long.”

someone comes in to actually use the bathroom, so he washes his hands for the sixth time, checks himself in the mirror to make sure there isn't any blood left on his face, and grudgingly returns to their table.

they're seated by one of the windows facing the parking lot. there's only a couple cars out there, none of which are tim's. after he sold his car, he started taking buses a lot more. he tried biking but it felt too vulnerable and he couldn't go near traffic because of fear of getting run over, and he couldn't go near empty roads because of fear of running away and waking up with a gap in his memory.

sometimes he just walks. only in cities, and never near parks.

there aren't a lot of other people seated at the tables. one guy tucked away in the corner by himself keeps looking back and forth between his phone and the kitchen. tim wishes he had a phone, fuck being impolite, he'd rather play flappy bird for hours instead of interact with another human being.

jessica doesn't say anything when he sits back down. her elbows are propped up on the red and white checkered tablecloth. he knows he has a vacant look in his eyes that makes him look bored and inattentive, but his eyes aren't as bloodshot as they were last week, she commented when he came in ten minutes late.

the dull morning light makes the dust in the air between him and jessica visible, hanging in the balance above the silverware wrapped in napkins. she won't stop looking at him for answers.

she says his name twice before he responds.

“yeah?”

“what happened to you last night?”

“hm?”

“you know damn well what I'm asking about.” she raises her voice and he lowers his eyes. “tim, I'm worried. what happened? are you ok?”

“I was.” he swallows. “paranoid. thought I saw something I didn't. it's called a psychotic episode, jessica. those happen to me.” mentioning his psychosis tends to end conversations pretty quickly. he doesn't have hope that this will turn jessica away, but he'll try nonetheless.

“tell me what you saw.” there's an unspoken _I know when you're lying to me_ he picks up on.

she doesn't always know when he's lying, although she thinks she does, but lies have never gotten him anywhere good.

so he sighs and tells the truth.

“you left me that voicemail, and it terrified me, but I can't imagined how terrified you must have been. you sounded so upset! please, just talk to me.”

“I had a nightmare in which I killed myself.”

“oh my god,” she breathes out. “tim...”

“no. it wasn't me. it was...”

he looks at the kitchen to see if their food is coming. the door bangs open as a waiter pops their head out to say something to the janitor, then slams shut.

jessica watches him expectantly.

he scratched his scalp red on the way here, and his skin tingles but he wants to scratch some more. he itches the back of his neck instead, and recalls the nightmare.

_the park is a messy green blur around him, the sensation of running through a thick and steady stream of unwavering trees chopped up and spit out through the camera's nightvision._

_his shoes are wet, his knees are stained with mud, he falls on his hands and the red scrap marks are black and blue and slimy. he used to wake up at this part with a soaked pillow or the forest floor underneath him._

_he crumbles, dissolves. the trees flow as one memory, reaching up to the sky and blocking out the pale ring of ling that guides him in the dark. the deathly pallor of the moonlight bleeds white static and audio distortions over his shaking hands._

_it has failed to guide him, he has failed, he runs away from the sentries. he runs until his legs give out, struggling against the current, dirty water up to his neck. he goes under the surface and kicks back up._

_no._

_not him._

_them._

_the one with the camera. but he's gone._

_the one with the suit. but he doesn't know where it comes from in the first place._

_the one with the mask. yes. them._

_they smell of mud and dogs and burning wood and, faintly, rust and mold and sweat under layers of clothing to cover the skin that isn't theirs. under gloves their fingers are smothered charcoal-black and blue when they forget that they can't sleep out in the cold. the calluses on their hands are no longer temporary aches, the bruises on these bodies are tender and perpetual, there are bones that did not mend decently._

_they crawl in the wet dirt under the sagging roof of an abandoned building with no floor and two walls struggling to remain standing up._

_“what are you doing here?” he asks._

_“what are YOU doing here?” they ask._

_“this is my body! not yours!”_

_“this is MY body! not YOURS!” they mimic him._

_“why are you here?”_

_“I'm angry at you. you threw me away. like garbage.”_

_he tackles them to the ground and claws at the strings holding the mask to their face. they reach for their pockets, but he gets there first._

_he pulls out a knife and they punch him._

_the sound of running water drains from the forest. the water smells oily._

_he cuts off the strings of the mask, and the knife is a hot coal burning his hand. he has to act fast or his skin will melt off. he presses the knife to their throat and cutting a clean line isn't as easy as the movies make it out to be. isn't so straightforward. lots of resistance._

_the blood makes his hands slippery and they open their mouth HIS mouth and gargle. it's too wet and red splatters his face, his jacket, their face, their jacket._

_he sniffs back snot like a five year old who fell off a slide and ended up miles away because his mom said it's just an imaginary friend, just an active imagination, just imagining things._

_they are a Thing and it is a Thing and both are very very real, if only because of the terror they give him. he can't do this. he can't kill them._

_but a Thing is holding his hands down and he's cutting open himself the water is kerosine the water is blood fire in his mouth can't tell mom she won't believe him can't tell the doctors they'll up his dose and he'll spend the next few days disorientated after being forced back into reality_

_he kills them he kills himself_

but he can't tell jessica that.

she keeps eye contact with him as the nightmare flashes in his head.

she won't let go when she knows she's close to answers. so much like jay. “if it wasn't you, who was it?”

“look,” he says. “I shouldn't have called you. but to be honest, I don't have anyone but you and my therapist to call. and the doctor's office isn't open all night long.”

she starts to tell him it's okay, he can call her whenever he needs, but the waiter sets down their plates of food between them. neither of them lift a fork to touch their meal.

“I shouldn't have called you,” he repeats.

she clenches her hands around the edges of the table.

“tim. I barely remember anything about my life, and you seem the know the most about my life, my own life, which I should know about more than anyone but I _don't._ all you've told me is that I need to take these pills and delete my contacts, and, yes, these pills help, but against what? what am I dreaming of? and you're dreaming of suicide!”

his eyes drift to the man in the corner, and a thousand anxious thoughts race through his head, that the man's taking pictures of him, recording jessica talking, preparing a cryptic message to drop off at his apartment hours away.

“I have nightmares, too, tim! I have horrible nightmares I wake up crying from, half-remembering things, forgetting it before I can wake up...you're the only person out there who knows what started this. you didn't explain to me why I needed to get rid everything on my phone! what's so horrible you can't tell me what was on there? I don't have your number, or a solid way to get in contact with you except for phone calls from different numbers out of the blue. and you call me at one in the morning screaming, even though I haven't heard from you since last week when you randomly drop by where I live and sleep on my couch and then _leave _, and you're the only link I have to my memories -”__

“you don't want them. you don't want the memories,” he interrupts her.

it was a mistake getting back in touch with her. she looks so crestfallen when he stands up to leave.

he pats his pockets for money to help with the bill. where the knife was, there's a bottle of pills. there's ten bucks in the other pocket, and he leaves it on the table.

he walks out on her.

the bus comes in ten minutes.


	2. them

his reality is crying in the middle of a commercial about nyquil, shoulders shaking, eyes puffy, nose running, throat sore as the sobs break their way through his body, because jay used to flick between channels, soap operas, cartoons, romcoms, and the ads followed them across state borders.

it was raining. the downpour had flooded the empty lot besides the hotel they were staying at. the nyquil bottle danced onto the screen and the faucet ran as tim waited for the water to warm up.

“I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid,” jay said out of nowhere.

“an astronaut?”

“yeah. I watched a lot of sci-fi stuff. I wanted to see the stars, meet aliens, that kinda thing.”

tim laughed. “personally, I wanted to be a dinosaur.”

his reality is a never-ending existential crisis. when he heats up a microwave dinner, he doubts he exists, finds himself shocked at how he can touch the food without fading. when he goes to bed, he can't sleep until he answers the question, is he important anymore? is he living just to spite alex, and what he said the day he burned down tim's house? just to show that he washed alex's blood off his hands and that was that, no guilt, no regret?

because there's nothing to feel. he can't answer those questions. his therapist asks him to consider hospitalization, or trying to meet new people, perhaps a support group, and he shuts down, stops listening, and leaves after a couple minutes. they don't know what he needs.

he could get a pet, but he can't feed himself, let alone a dog or cat. searching for a roommate would only drag another innocent into the hopeless paranoia of his life. he can't have friends. he'll infect them.

his reality is a blotchy miserable loneliness, a hallucination that lasts for a week, a seizure he forgets to take medication for, an appointment he missed because he stayed at home with every light on, worrying that the shadows were going to kill him.

it is raining. his heating got shut off because he forgot to pay his bills. cold, listless, he falls asleep on his couch and the dream sets in _like he was already asleep._

_the persistent wail of sirens echoes after them. so little time._

_the night air freezes their lungs. behind the farm, the ark awaits, and it leaks the smell of germ-x and cough drops and the sounds of the nurse's shoes on the hospital floor._

_it follows them through the gray grassland until the field comes to a stop at a barbed-wire fence. once it kept animals away from the crops, but judging by the dilapidated barn on the other side, the farmer is long gone and the weeds reach their waist._

_it is dew and wind and frost. they suck in a rattling breath, oxygen for this weak heart, and wonder how it found them here._

_“are you an angel?” he stands by the mangled fence with awe written all over his face. he's been in and out of public school, so it took him a long time to learn how to tie his shoes, but he quickly learned how to escape the doctors and find them._

_bad timing. more feral than the Things who take hosts, it pulses and beckons and hums for the child. hungry._

_this is no sanctuary. tim, wide-eyed, missing a front tooth, doesn't know they can't stop it. nothing can. it does not eat meat. with help they could hold it back, but they have no partner. a partner would be useful. someday they will go back and find one._

_the ark breathes. the hollow thud of a rock hitting cement. the persistent thud of knuckles on wood. thud thud thud. thud thud_ thud.

“I'm coming,” tim grumbles. thud thud thud. “I said I'm coming, give me a second.”

the room is more chilly than when he went to sleep. he opens the door, shivering, and doesn't believe who's standing on his doorstep.

“how did you find my address?” he asks accusingly.

jessica walks dizzily into the apartment. she looks around at the bare walls and takes a seat on his couch. tim sighs and asks her again how she found him, and why she's soaking wet as if she walked the whole way here from her place.

“do you remember,” she says, “how you looked when we had him? almost had him? I remember that.”

“what the hell are you talking about? are you...remembering things?”

“we almost had him,” she sighs.

“you shouldn't try remembering. I told you, it won't do any good.” he should offer a towel or something. she's dripping all over his good couch.

“but you let him off, you only wanted to warn him. but I remember how you looked. like you wanted to do more than warn him. that was both of you, in that look.”

“him?” he shouldn't encourage her and he's scared of the name she might say, but the ambiguous mumbling is making his skin crawl.

“he hurt them. and you. the body. it's both of you, and always will be. you're not alone. we'll be here, and always will be.”

he doesn't know what she's talking about, but he wants her out of his house, doesn't want to hear another word. he stands up and prepares to act gruff and blunt, get out of my apartment, you're pissing me off, despite the fact that if jessica asks anything about jay at this time he would start crying then and there.

jessica stands up too, and he notices something black and tattered in her hands.

“I was angry at you for a while, but I understand we don't see the same way. I'm trying to see your way now. look, I'm talking to you with words instead of colors. or numbers. they will forgive you, and we can finally understand each other.”

he wrenches the mask out of her unresisting hands. the red frown hasn't changed from the last time he saw it on the head of his dead best friend. “where did you get this? how did you find this?”

“it's mine. but I don't need it. we don't have to be faceless like it, that Thing, when we can talk, really talk.”

he feels sick. “get out, get OUT.”

“jay didn't want to die. he wouldn't want you to die.”

instantly, he deflates. he flinches away from jessica. 

“you're not alone.” she coos, but her voice is monotone, sympathetic in a flat way. “we're not alone. it will come back, when it knows we're here. we can hold it off.”

“please, just go,” he cries.

she holds him, and her arms are cold and wet. she whispers through her teeth, a smile sharp enough to cut plastered on her worn-out face, “whenever you're ready to talk, tim.”


End file.
